Titles
by Thinkette
Summary: It's not like the two of them ever really needed to give any kind of confirmation. Everyone knew they were going to get together. It was just a matter of when. ((Seven drabbles by Lollipop-Mania in honor of V-Day.))


_**"So she said what's the problem baby?**_  
><em><strong>What's the problem I don't know, well <strong>_  
><em><strong>maybe I'm in love"<strong>_

**1. Friends**

Temari was never an outcast in Suna, but she did feel alone. Never as lonesome as Gaara, of course, but still a stranger in her own homeland, still an anomaly. The kunoichi, most of whom felt an immense connection to one another, found her too callous and cold, despite the field. The citizens were fragile as ancient pottery around the soldiers, and each other, and even more so toward her with the title she bore. Most unfriendly were the shinobi she worked alongside, who at first dismissed her because she was a woman, and when bested by her, burned with shame so hot they refused to come near her again.

She wasn't planning to find kinship with the Nara boy. He was lazy, spoiled by his warm and breezy upbringing, sensitive, _weak_.

And yet, somehow, one of the few men, _people_, who not only had the strength to deal with her, but found happiness in it. She didn't expect it, but she found that friendship, even with the crybaby, was certainly not as unpleasant as she had feared.

**2. a couple**

The first person to assume she and Crybaby were dating was his mother. Yoshino Nara was a woman Temari knew how to respect almost instinctively. The ache in her chest from losing her own mom was still sharp, but Yoshino knew how to be just enough like Karura to provide some twisted kind of nostalgia, but dissimilar to the point of proving to be more than just a substitute. So Temari, instead of sharp and mean, could only feel her cheeks glow like the lightening bugs she used to chase outside her house when she denied her.

Following in Yoshino's footsteps, was Ino with a sly smile, Naruto with an oblivious innocence, Chouji with a gentle eye and Asuma with his lips twitching around a cigarette. Her reactions to these accusations dimmed until they softened to mere scoffs.

And as much as they were wrong and annoying and wrong, wrong, **wrong**, what really bothered her was that she understood why they thought so (because sometimes, so did she).

**3. being engaged**

She will never forget.

When she was younger, she had a doll that opened up at the middle, hollowed out so she could fill it with trinkets. And she would always remember the sight of the thing on the floor, broken in fragments so small, she could never hope to glue them together.

That was what Shikamaru was, then. So empty and tiny in front of her, with eyes that looked like snuffed out stars after his sensei's death. She, in the rarest moments of softness, set her hand against his shoulder and squeezed, watching as the nails made marks in the fabric of his shirt. Sometimes, she swore they were engaged, or dating, or _something. _A piece of her mused if that was why she felt so horrible in that moment, witnessing the vulnerable meat of his anguish: if the threads connecting two people ran so deep they'd be sick together, sad together.

When he bowed his head into his hands, shoulders shaking beneath her palm, a stray wisp of his hair brushed against her ring finger.

And she didn't move it away.

**4. a married couple**

Temari was never careful about her appearance when she was doing paperwork. Out in the field, she was, even just a tad. After all, a kunoichi was still a _female_ ninja, and her looks were just as strong a weapon as her fan was. But when she was doing the mind numbing preparations for the chuunin exams, she couldn't even be bothered.

Hell, half the time, she fell asleep on her desk, woke in the morning and washed her face out of the bathroom sink and resumed her duties in stale clothes, same as Nara did. The two of them eventually learned to keep spares of their hygiene products at the workroom due to the fact, and today was no different. Her eyes blinked open to flat light of the morning, and she stayed still for only a moment before she got up, zombie-like, and moseyed to the tiny bathroom. Shikamaru was at the sink already, hair down and mechanically going through the motions of brushing his teeth. Temari bumped him over with her hip so she could have access as well.

He only grunted as he was moved, eyes skimming over the dust-nest of her hair and the fuzzy look on her face before he settled back against her so they could share the mirror, shoulder to shoulder.

It had only been two months in to their preparations, and if the two of them continued at that pace, they wouldn't even need rings.

**5. Parents**

Asumaru barely reached her thighs. He was absolutely tiny and he made her feel so giant and powerful and she was too scared to even try to hold him, but Pineapple-Head sure wasn't. Kuranai was still a ninja, a jounin, and had a duty to her village despite the death of her lover, but having a child complicated almost everything. She promised Tsunade that she would retire to teach at the academy so she'd have more time with her son, but she was delaying it for as long as she could.

Sometimes, Temari had to think about that. What it meant to be a mother and a ninja both, and to who and WHAT you kept your commitment to. Kuranai had such a strong attachment to her home and defending it that she wouldn't even make her relationship known, so how could she juggle her newfound motherhood with what she has known all her life?

Usually, it was with regretful eyes that the genjutsu master would leave her son, right in front of the Nara lands, talking to Shikamaru with hushed voices. Not that Temari was always there, but when she was, it felt too natural not to have happened countless times before.

This time, Shikamaru greeted her at the gates with the small boy perched on his hip. The blonde felt her eyebrows hit almost to her hairline, before her lips involuntarily turned up. She had always been so afraid to hold him, just as she had been too afraid to hold her brothers when they were younger as well.

But when Shikamaru asked her to hold the boy as he got something, it was effortless, instinctual, the way she grabbed him. As the two of them walked to the flat he had gotten for himself just a few months prior, she ignored the sickly sweet smiles aimed at them.

Even if "what a cute family" sounded way too good.

**6. Strangers**

The first time they had sex, it was an accident. Purely a mistake, absolutely and definitely, but she still stayed the night. The sheet was sticky and her hair was mused, the mattress was too small for their bodies together, but she was tired, damnit. So she slept, and when she woke up, she felt like taffy that had been kept out in the cold: stiff, and inflexible. Groaning, she had looked over at her bed-partner and found his eyes open, strategizing.

When her sight skimmed over his shoulders, speckled with pinks and reds, beginnings of the mouth-made bruises she gifted the night before, she felt unnaturally uncomfortable.

The space between them, small as it was on a mattress meant for one, seemed farther than Suna and Konaha.

**7. couple** _(again, and this time they finally are)_

Their lives didn't change a bit with a new title. The two of them knew long, long before they actually put names to their relationship that they were more than just comrades, and, frankly, they still did the exact same things. She didn't move to Konaha, gushing about how much she adored him. He didn't go to Suna, proclaiming his love outside of her window.

They were really not that kind of couple.

So when Valentine's Day came, they almost didn't take any notice. She got him nothing, he did the same. And as they walked down the dusty street, there was no indication anything had even occurred between the two of them, save for the single connection of their pinkies.

"Hey, 'Mari?" he asked.

"Mm?" she hummed, head tilted as she looked at the weapons shop with a Buy one Get one sale going on in honor of the day.

"Want to play shougi?"

She only smiled as they changed course to walk to his flat, not batting an eye to any of the bright posters and candy boxes. They never needed a day dedicated to lovers to show how much they cared about each other before, and they certainly didn't now, either.

They just weren't that kind of couple.

* * *

><p><strong>So, this was a drabble set started by Lollipop-Mania that I found in my inbox, and failed to read properly. I started writing it before I even noticed the section that said<strong> "a few short drabbles with the prompt that each time they meet they are mistaken for something they're not. each one takes place on vday" **and now I feel silly because for an English major in College, I clearly have no reading comprehension!**

**Still, I hope you enjoy my attempt for Single's Awareness Day! And definitely go check out Lollipop-Mania because if you're a fan of ShikaTema, you will absolutely adore the wonderful fics and wonderful writing!**


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